Summer Reading

 

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From new bestsellers to old classics, hanging on the beach or

curled up on the porch, here is your sporty summer reading list for 2017! Baseball, football, basketball, tennis and more, we’ve got all your favorite sports covered with enticing reads — even if you’re not a sports fan.

 

THE CUBS WAY:

The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball

and Breaking the Curse

By Tom Verducci (2017)

 
After 108 years, it finally happened. This New York Times bestseller tells the tale of the 2016 Chicago Cubs and their transformation from perennial underachievers to the best team in baseball. With inside access and reporting, Sports Illustrated senior baseball writer and FOX Sports analyst, Tom Verducci, reveals how Theo Epstein and Joe Maddon built, led, and inspired the Chicago Cubs team to break the longest championship drought in sports, chronicling their epic journey to become World Series champions.
 

PAPER LION: 

Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback

By George Plimpton (1966)

 
The book for which perhaps George Plimpton was best known, Paper Lion set the bar for participatory sports journalism. With his characteristic wit, Plimpton recounts his experiences in talking his way into training camp with the Detroit Lions, practicing with the team, and taking snaps behind center. His breezy style captures the pressures and tensions rookies confront, the hijinks that pervade when sixty high-strung guys live together in close quarters, and a host of football rites and rituals. One of the funniest and most insightful books ever written on football, Paper Lion is a classic look at the gridiron game.

THE SECRETS OF MY LIFE 

By Caitlyn Jenner (2017)

 
The world was shocked when Bruce Jenner, one of the most celebrated Olympic icons, revealed on national television a lifelong struggle with gender dysphoria. With the unforgettable Vanity Fair cover by Annie Leibovitz and story by Buzz Bissinger, who penned this memoir, Caitlyn Jenner was introduced to the world. In The Secrets of My Life, Caitlyn reflects on the inner conflict she experienced growing up in an era of rigidly defined gender identities, and the cruel irony of being hailed as the ultimate symbol of manhood. Filled with incredibly personal and moving stories of struggle and victory, anxiety and fear, surrender and acceptance, The Secrets of My Life is Caitlyn’s story of becoming herself.
 

BORN TO RUN: 

A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
by Christopher McDougall (2011)

 
Isolated by Mexico’s Copper Canyons, the blissful Tarahumara Indians have honed the ability to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury. In a riveting narrative, award-winning journalist Christopher McDougall sets out to discover their secrets in what has become one of the most referenced books on running. His journey takes readers from the science labs at Harvard University; to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks of North America; to a climactic race in the Copper Canyons. McDougall’s incredible story will engage your mind and inspire your body with the discovery that indeed all of us, were born to run.
 

STING-RAY AFTERNOONS

by Steve Rushin (2017)

 
Steve Rushin grew up in the 1970’s, within a landscape populated with Bic pens, Mr. Clean, Scrubbing Bubbles, and those coveted Schwinn Sting-Ray bikes. Sting-Ray Afternoons paints an utterly fond, psychedelically vibrant, laugh-out-loud-funny portrait of an exuberant decade. With sidesplitting commentary, Rushin creates a vivid picture of a decade of wild youth, cultural rebirth, and the meaning of parental, brotherly, sisterly, and a whole lotta love.
 

KNOWING THE SCORE: 

What Sports Can Teach Us About Philosophy

(And What Philosophy Can Teach Us About Sports)

by David Papinoe (2017)

 
In Knowing the Score, philosopher David Papineau uses sports to illuminate some of modern philosophy’s most perplexing questions. As Papineau demonstrates, the study of sports clarifies, challenges, and sometimes confuses crucial issues in philosophy. Do the tactics of road bicycle racing shed new light on questions of altruism? Why do sports competitors choke? Why do fans think God will favor their team over their rivals? An entertaining and erudite book that ranges far and wide through the sporting world, Knowing the Score is perfect reading for armchair philosophers and Monday morning quarterbacks alike.
 

TWO TURNS FROM ZERO:

Pushing to Higher Fitness Goals–Converting Them to Life Strength
by Stacey Griffith (2017)

 
Stacey Griffith, one of the iconic faces of the wildly popular SoulCycle, has helped thousands reshape their bodies and minds. In Two Turns From Zero, she provides a life handbook for feeling healthy, happy, and empowered. With conditioning advice, nutrition counseling, and goal visualization, Griffith shows readers how to access their highest levels of performance and turn life’s challenges into successes. Two Turns from Zero is also a personal story. Giving up alcohol, drugs, and partying, Griffith dedicated her life to fitness and embarked on a journey of discovery she uses to motivate others as well.
 

TROPHY SON

by Douglas Brunt (2017)

 
Anton Stratis has been groomed to be one thing only: the #1 tennis player in the world. Trained relentlessly by his obsessive father, a former athlete himself, Anton both aspires to greatness and resents its all-consuming demands. Lonely and isolated, removed from school and socialization to focus on tennis, Anton explodes onto the professional scene to become one of the top-ranked players in the world. But as Anton struggles to find a balance between stardom and family, he begins to make compromises ― first with himself, then with his health, and finally with the rules of tennis. Trophy Son offers an inside look at the dangers of extraordinary pressure to achieve, whether in sports or any field, through the eyes of a young man defying his parents’ ambitions as he seeks a life of his own.
 

COACH WOODEN AND ME:

Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

 
When future NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was still an 18-year-old high school basketball prospect from New York City named Lew Alcindor, he accepted a scholarship from UCLA primarily on the strength of Coach John Wooden’s reputation as a winner. It turned out to be the right choice, as Alcindor and his teammates won an unprecedented three NCAA championship titles. In this New York Times bestseller, Abdul-Jabbar reveals the inspirational story of how his bond with John Wooden evolved from a history-making coach-player mentorship into a deep and genuine friendship that transcended sports, shaped the course of both men’s lives, and lasted for half a century.

 
 

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